Here’s something a little different from our usual topics, but which relates to the issue of intellectually honest reporting. The On the Media program on (US) National Public Radio had an interesting segment last week about the linguistic choices journalists must make. The segment explored the NPR Ombudsman’s justification of using the term “enhanced [or harsh] interrogation techniques”, favoured by the Bush administration, to describe waterboarding. Bob Garfield put the counter-argument to the Ombudsman that:
The U.N.’s High Commissioner for Human Rights says that waterboarding is torture. The International Committee of the Red Cross have called what the U.S. did “torture.” Waterboarding is unambiguously in violation of the International Convention on Torture, which has been ratified by 140-some countries.
It seems to me that the only people who think it’s a debate are the Bush Administration, who are the culprits. So how does that constituent [sic] a debate?
…
I put it to you that embracing a euphemism for torture validates a political position. You’re trying to be apolitical but, in fact, to embrace terms like “harsh interrogation tactics” instead of calling a thing by its name, in effect, gives credence to the Bush Administration’s argument, does it not?
While the debate over terminology for interrogation methods is more relevant to US political coverage, we can see examples of similar linguistic issues in the Australian media’s reporting and commentary. The debate over global warming and climate change policies is one area where this seems to come up, with commentators and politicians attempting to characterise themselves as “sceptics” and others branding them as “denialists”, while the other side might be labeled as “alarmists”. I’m sure there are plenty of other examples, but that is the one with the most emotionally charged terms at the moment.
It’s an interesting discussion and well worth checking out – and it highlights the importance of the media explaining clearly what they mean by certain terms, as well as examining the value judgments that might be reflected in their choice of language.
NB: As an aside, I’d also note that the program had some other great stories as well, including coverage of the difficulties covering the crisis in Iran, the pros and cons of successful bloggers (in particular, Ezra Klein and Ross Douthat) taking jobs with traditional media sites, claims of liberal media bias, crowd-sourcing and the “ambush interview” technique.
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald of salon.com has attempted to get an interview with Alicia Shepard, the NPR Ombudsman, and been refused.
11 Comments
Interesting topic. Thanks, Tobias.
Glenn Greenwald at salon.com has been talking about this a fair bit in his columns. Here’s the most recent one:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/30/shepard/index.html
Thanks, fred – I’ve just added an update to the post with that link. As Greenwald notes, there’s lots of interesting discussion in the comments at OtM as well.
If you were truly honest, you would add to this editorial the fact the Obama administration now calls terrorism “man-caused disasters”.
September 11, London 7/7, Madrid, Lockerbie… countless other acts of bloody terror, countless senseless deaths now reduced to “man-caused disasters.
Are they trying to kid us, or themselves?
The Obama administration is part of the press? Who knew?
The press no longer hides the fact they are part of the Obama adminstration, so what is your point, fred?
Apart from body & olfactory signals, almost all communication relies upon words. When they are devalued, twisted, elided, beaten senseless and scrubbed free of meaning, so too are our internal thoughts. Given that most people get by using fewer than 500 words (including verb declensions) it’s hardly surprising that governments & bigbiz employ far more “journalists” than newspapers.
As the camp commandant in “Cool Hand Luke” did NOT say – “what we have here is a deliberate attempt to fail to communicate”.
Andrew Bolt says that “relevance and credibility will be the keys to [News Ltd's] survival”.
Where to start?
The press no longer hides the fact they are part of the Obama adminstration
LOL. such profound ignorance.
there’s also the NY Times which has only recently begun using torture in place of EIT.
ePedro, my point was that we are discussing the refusal of the media to use the word “torture when discussing the US’s use of, er, torture. The Obama administration is not part of the press.
Typos due to weird screen-split situation in which I could not see what I was typing…